Motivate those kids by publishing their best stories at our ning! Click here to post your students' adjective-inspired stories!

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Do you have a clever way you help your students connect with using better adjectives in writing? Something better than a worksheet? Consider sharing it with us by clicking here.

Welcome, Young Writers!

The Adjective
Game for Kids

developing word choice with younger writers

What are three interesting adjectives
for this koala bear?

When done playing this word game, click on the koala bear to return to the WritingFix for Kids Menu.

Hey, kids....can you write a story based on three interesting adjectives? Click the three buttons below to find out!

.

Then on these three buttons...

...and then write a great story!

If you accidentally go past a noun you liked, hover over the adjective you don't want, and use the right-button on your mouse to "undo" your extra press of the button. It really works!

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Share back with WritingFix and you could earn a classroom resource from NNWP:
What Mentor Texts could Strengthen this Lesson? Suggest a mentor text for the following essential question:

Hey teachers! What published work do you use to teach younger writers to carefully choose memorable and thoughtful adjectives while writing? Click here to tell us the name of the mentor text, to share a brief description of the text, and to explain how you'd use the book to inspire better writing from your students. If we feature your idea at this page, you'll earn a resource for your classroom!

Share a Mentor Text and Adjective Activity: I love bringing out Brian Cleary's picture book Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What Is an Adjective? I use it when teaching students to not always choose the first descriptive word (adjective) that pops into their heads. A really fun activity for young writers is to put them in groups of three or four, and have them create rhyming sets of three adjectives (like the title of this mentor text--hairy, scary, ordinary). You will need to walk around and help students be sure to ONLY choose adjectives for their set of words, which is a challenge when they have to rhyme. You'll want to model the process too; I use the words slinky, stinky, and inky for my modeling, and I make sure the students understand that pinky is a noun, which is not why it's on my list, though pink is an adjective. When all the groups have (at least) one set of words, they can illustrate a poster that has all three words printed on it. These can hang around the room.

Share back with WritingFix and you could earn a classroom resource from NNWP:
What Lessons Strengthen Adjective Use? Share an activity you'd use before or after your students write:

Hey teachers: What mini-lessons/pre-writing activities would you present to teach younger writers to carefully choose interesting and memorable adjectives for their writing? Click here to briefly share a technique you use to strengthen your students' awareness of adjectives that improve writing. The models below are models of the kind of good ideas we're hoping teachers will share with us.

When working with young writers, I like to discuss the magic of adjectives and talk about how these words help create pictures in the reader's mind. To demonstrate this, I place an object in a small paper bag and distribute one bag to each pair of students. Their job is to list adjectives on the outside of the bag that will help us get a picture in our minds of what's inside. When we regroup the kids love guessing what's inside based on the adjective clues their friends have written.

A fun way I teach my Kindergarteners that number and color words are describing words called adjectives is by having them draw and decorate colorful spring kites. I ask my students to draw and color up to three kites using two different colors and one design element such as stripes, dots, hearts, swirls, etc. for each kite. Then I have them practice writing sentences to describe their kites using number words, color words, and descriptive words, such as striped, dotted, etc. The children share their sentences, and volunteers identify the correct kites and the describing words.